A 






^°-^. 
















^ 

















A 











■a? ^ 


















^■^0^ :^ 











-n^-o^ :<^ 



^•^ °^ \^ 











.. s*- A <^. 'o . » - .0^ 



C^ i^ /At*. A 



-^-^ 






7 




u 



NECROLOGICAL NOTICE 



Hon. RICHARD S. FIELD, LL.D. 



NECROLOGICAL XOTICE 



Hon. RICHARD STOCKTOiX FIELD, 11. D.. 

OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY- 



READ BEFORE THE 



NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY 
OF PHILADELPHIA, 



AT ITS 



Regular Monthly Meeting', Thursday Evening, October 6, 1870. 



BY 

CHAELES HENRY HART, LL. B., 

HISTOKIOGRAPHEK OF THE SOCIETY. 




PHILADELPHIA 

1870. 



/ 



/^ 



COLLINS, PRINTER. 



NECROLOGICAL NOTICE. 



At the meeting next following the demise of our late 
Honorary Vice-President for the State of New Jersey, ElCH- 
ARD Stockton Field, LL. D., I presented for your consider- 
ation some resolutions of respect to his memory, and I will 
now ask your attention while I sketch briefly his life. 

EiciiARD Stockton Field was born at Whitehill, in the 
county of Burlington, New Jersey, on the last day of Decem- 
ber, 1803. The history of the family descent is somewhat 
obscure, but it is certain that he was descended from the same 
family as John Field, the distinguished English astronomer 
of the middle of the sixteenth century, who was the first to 
use the Copernican system as a basis for calculations for prac- 
tical purposes, in his "Bphemeris anni 1557 currentis, juxta 
Copernici et Eeinhaldi Canones fideliter per Joannem Field." 
This work, which was of considerable magnitude, was under- 
taken at the suggestion of the celebrated Dr. Dee, and was 
probably the very first publication in which any notice was 
taken of the discoveries of Copernicus. This John Field was 
born about the year 1520, and was a son of Richard Fielde 
of Ardsley, who was likely a grandson of William Fielde or 
Feld of Bradford, who died in 1480. In 1555, the year 
before he published his first Bphemeris, he was admitted fel- 
low of Lincoln's College, Oxford. About 1560 he married 
Jane Amyas, a daughter of John Amyas, of Kent, and removed 
from London, where he had been living, to Ardsley, where 
he died in 1587. He published an Ephemeris for 1558, and 
another for 1559, in each of which he put forth more strongly 



than in the last, his support of the sj^stem which he had the 
honor of introducing into England. "It was in recognition 
of the great service which he had thus rendered to the cause 
of science, that he received a patent in 1558, authorizing him 
to wear as a crest over his family arms, a red rigid arm issuing 
from the clouds and supporting a golden sphere, thereby inti- 
mating the splendor of the Copernican discovery. There is 
a seal in the possession of the family at Princeton which was 
no doubt handed down from one generation to another — on 
one side is the family coat of arms, on another is the crest 
before referred to — an arm supporting a globe — and on the 
third side 'E. F.,' the initials of the name of Eobert Field," 
the emigrant ancestor of the family in this country. John 
Field had nine children, from the second of whom, Mathew, 
born at Ardley in 1563, it has been attempted to trace the 
American family of the name. This, however, is considered 
to be erroneous, while it is admitted that the American family 
are descended from the William of Bradford, the supposed 
great-grandfather of the astronomer, which if correct would 
make Eichard Fielde the father of John, and John Fielde the 
known ancestor of the emigrant, first cousins. The existence 
of the triangular seal with the initials of the emigrant ances- 
tor of the family in this country on one side, and the crest 
granted to the astronomer on a second, with the arms of the 
family on the third, does not prove by any means conclusively 
that the former was a direct descendant of the latter; as rib- 
bons and crests were often adopted by a family who had no 
hereditary right to them, and worn over their legitimate 
"coats armour," which might have been sans crest. It does, 
however, tend to show very strongly that they were descended 
from the same family, as has already been asserted; bat when 
the fact of the direct descent hangs merely upon tradition, 
w^hile that of collateral descent is based upon the evidence of 
ancient records, we are surely bound to regard the latter and 
discard the former, as I have done in the present case, therein 



following Osgood Field, Esq., of London, in his researches. 
The last-named John Fielde had a son William, who died in 
1599, whose son, also William, died in 1619, and had Robert, 
born about 1605, who married May 18, 1630, Elizabeth Tay- 
lor, with whom he came to New England, according to one 
account, in 1635, while by another it was not until nine years 
later. In 1645 he removed with his family to Newtown, 
Long Island, and with others received from Governor Keift a 
patent for a tract of land known as the Flushing Patent, 
which was dated October 10, 1615. He had five children; 
the second, a son named Anthony, died in 1691, and had two 
children, the eldest of whom was John, who removed to 
Boundbrook, in New Jersey, about 1685, and was the founder 
of the family in that State. His direct descendants, as far as 
they can be traced, are his son, Robert Field, born January 
6th, 1694, married Mary, daughter of Samuel and Susanna 
Taylor, by whom he had Robert, born May 9th, 1723, and 
married Mary, daughter of Oswald and Lydia Peale. He 
died January 29, 1775, and had posthumous issue Robert C. 
Field, born April 5th, 1775. This was the father of our late 
member. In 1793, he was graduated by Princeton College, 
and had for a classmate John Henry Hobart, afterwards the 
distinguished Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church for 
the Diocese of New York. "He married Abby, born 8th of 
April, 1778, daughter of Richard Stockton and Annis Bou- 
dinot, in 1797." He died in 1810, leaving five children, the 
fourth of whom was the subject of this notice. The next 
year after his father's death the family removed to Princeton, 
where was the residence of the family of Mrs. Field, and at 
this place he received his education, being graduated with 
high honors by Princeton College in 1821. On his leaving 
college he entered upon the study of the law with his mater- 
nal uncle, Richard Stockton, one of the most distinguished 
members of the New Jersey bar, and was admitted to practice 
in February, 1825. He at once removed to Salem, in his 



6 

native State, wliere he continued in the practice of his pro- 
fession until 1832, when he returned to Princeton and made 
it his future residence. 

In 1831, while still at Salem, he married Miss Mary Eitchie, 
and by her he had five children, she dying September 8th, 
1852, after a union of twenty-one years. For several years 
Mr. Field was a member of the State Legislature, and in 
February, 1838, was appointed Attorney-General by Governor 
Pennington, and in this high and responsible position, which 
he resigned in 1811, he acquitted himself with ability and 
honor. He was a leading member of the Convention which 
met at Trenton on the 14th of May, 1844, and formed the 
present Constitution of the State, and when in 1851 it was 
resolved to form an Association of the surviving members of 
that Convention, he was appointed to deliver the address at 
its first annual meeting. This address, which was delivered 
February 1st, 1853, has been printed, and contains an elo- 
quent memorial of the great Convention which sixty-six years 
before met in this city, and with Washington as its President 
framed the Constitution of these United States. 

In the New Jersey Historical Society, of which he was at 
the time of his death its third President, he always took a 
lively interest. To its publications he contributed his most 
elaborate work, " The Provincial Courts of New Jersey, with 
Sketches of the Bench and Bar." It forms the third volume 
of the Collections of the Society, and was the subject of two 
discourses delivered by him in January and May, 1848. At 
the meeting of the Society in September, 1851, he read a 
valuable paper on the celebrated "Trial of the Rev. William 
Tenncnt for Perjury in 1742," which was printed in the pro- 
ceedings of the meeting; and to The Princeton Review for 
July, 1852, he contributed the leading article, on "The Pub- 
lications of the New Jersey Historical Society," but more 
particularly noticing its latest issue, "The Papers of Governor 
Lewis Morris." "Elected one of the Executive Committee 



in 1851, he continued to hold the position until 1865, when, 
on the elevation of the Hon. James Parker to the presidency 
on the death of the Hon. Joseph C. Hornblower, he was 
chosen .First Vice-President, and on the death of Mr. Parker 
in 1868, succeeded him in the Presidency." At the annual 
meeting in January, 1865, he delivered "An Address on the 
Life and Character of Chief Justice Hornblower," and at the 
January meeting, 1869, a similar one on his predecessor. 
President Parker. Copies of each of these we have, as also 
of most of his other publications, through his own kindness. 

Mr. Field was much interested in the great question of 
public education, and when, in 1855, the State Normal School 
was organized, he was chosen President of the Board of 
Trustees, and about this time he delivered an address on 
"The Power of Habit." (Allibone's Dictionary of Authors.) 
He continued in this position until the hour of his death, 
and every Annual Eeport made to the Legislature by this 
Board was written by him. Pie has been succeeded in the 
office by our corresponding member, the Hon. William A. 
"Whitehead, of Newark. For some years he was a Professor 
in the law school connected with Princeton College, which 
owed its very existence to his energy and talents, and in 
1859, his Alma Mater conferred upon him her degree of Doc- 
tor of Laws. 

During the troublous times of the last decade of years he 
was a stanch supporter of the government, and although 
the writer cannot agree with him in some of his constitu- 
tional views and theories, still he must admire the force and 
earnestness with which they were expressed. By request of 
his fellow townsmen he delivered before them an oration on 
the 4th of July, 1861, with "The Constitution not a Compact 
between Sovereign States" as his subject. In this he strongly 
advances those views already referred to. On the death of 
Hon. John E. Thomson, a Senator in Congress from New 
Jersey, Mr. Field was appointed, Nov. 1862, by Governor 



8 

Olden to fill the unexpired term. But his service in the 
council of the nation was but brief; he being appointed bj 
President Lincoln, Judge of the United States District Court 
for the District of New Jersey, on the 21st of January, 1863. 
During his occupancy of a seat in the Senate of the United 
States he had the opportunity, however, of making a speech 
or rather an argument on the Discharge of State Prisoners, 
January 7, 1863, which drew upon him the special attention 
of a large portion of the Eepublican party, and particularly 
of its press. In this speech he supported the position that 
the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus was vested in 
the President, and not in Congress. His views on this subject 
were in accordance with those expressed by the venerable 
Horace Binney in his celebrated pamphlets on the subject of 
the "Suspension of the Writ." That they were wrong and 
the act of the executive in suspending it unconstitutional, 
was virtually acknowledged by the act of March 8d, 1863, 
authorizing the suspension. On this subject the argument of 
Mr. Justice Eead, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 
written for Mr. Sumner, is exhaustive and unanswerable, and 
it may be well considered that the passage of the act just 
alluded to was based upon this argument. When Mr. Field 
took his seat upon the bench of the United States District 
Court, April 21st, 1863, he delivered a most learned and ex- 
cellent charge to the grand jury, which has been printed in 
a pamphlet of twenty -four pages. In his judicial life he has 
been described by one who knew him well. District Attorney 
Keasbey, as a "wise, upright, fearless, and merciful judge." 
The same gentleman then continues : — " Only one decision 
of his was ever reversed ; that was one in which the Supreme 
Court were at first almost evenly divided, and ordered a new 
argument. Even in the warmth of advocacy, or after that 
warmth had cooled a little, I scarcely ever felt that he was 
wrong. He had a keen perception of the real point and 
merits of a case. With all his rich culture he had sagacity 



9 

and sound common sense, . If he was at all complained of 
it was for the ardor and zeal with which he expressed him- 
self on the bench. This was in his nature. He always did 
it with courtesy and kindness, and so as to carry conviction 
to the minds he addressed. And I am sure there is not one 
of all who have been in this court, who will ever say that he 
was warped in his judgment by any impure or unworthy mo- 
tive. In these duties he had a wonderful mastery of the 
English tongue. He was fully acquainted with the fountains 
of English eloquence, and his mind was so stored with the 
fruits of his learning that he had a rare facility of expression. 
He always preferred to charge juries or decide cases on the 
spot. He could always do it better than if he stopped to 
think or write. I think that if we could reproduce simply 
his addresses to prisoners about to be sentenced, they would 
be striking models of manly and tender exhortation." 

Mr. Field was a warm admirer of the late President Lin- 
coln ; as he has expressed it himself, he was " one whom I 
loved while living, and whose death I deeply deplore." At 
the request of the Legislature of New Jersey, Mr. Field 
delivered before it, February 12, 1866, an oration on the 
Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln, it being the anni- 
versary of the President's birthday. At the Centennial Cele- 
bration of the American Whig Society of the College of 
New Jersey, in June, 1869, Mr. Field delivered his last public 
address, and it is one marked by great purity of style and 
graceful erudition. It is on his favorite theme of Education. 

In April last, while Mr. Field was in the discharge of his 
duties on the bench, he was stricken with a paralysis, and 
after uttering some incoherent remarks, fell senseless from 
his seat. He was carried from the court-room to his beauti- 
ful home, in which he so much prided himself, and after 
lingering some weeks totally unconscious, resigned his spirit 
to his Father on the 25th day of May, 1870, and was interred 



10 

in the rural graveyard at Princeton, "beside the wife be lost 
eighteen years before." 

One of the most striking points of his character, and one 
to be fondly cherished, for it reveals better, perhaps, than 
any other could, the inmost recesses of his heart, was his 
warm love. of nature and of nature's works. The spacious 
grounds about his residence at Princeton were remarkable 
for the rich collection of trees and flowers there cultivated, 
comprising specimens from the remotest parts of the earth. 
These he tended with an almost parental affection, and the 
name of each, with its peculiarity and locality, was firmly 
fastened on his memory. He attended the services of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and in its councils was an active 
Avorker, being repeatedly a delegate both to the Diocesan and 
General Conventions. This record of his life I trust will 
afford ample reason for his being chosen at the annual meet- 
ing of this Society in January, 1866, an Honorary Vice- 
President, and to its library he has been a faithful contributor. 

He left three children to survive him, to one of whom. 
Miss Annis S, Field, I am indebted for much of the material 
for this sketch. 



file. 



% 






v<^ 



^C 













.V 



1 * <?,^ 



S' 









,0 



.^^ 



,^' 



.<^ 



^i5 'o . » - A, ^ 



.^^ 



<xy 




u,^"^ 

vS^ 



. <*> ^-^ L / - -^ A% V- " • • * 4O O 'o , » A 









^o j.0'7\ 









-^^0^ 



















.0^" ^-^ 



^^•n^^ V 



.-^^n 






•^9 
V-^. 






.<^^°-^ '■: 















